U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania has been going out of his way lately to support the abortion chain Planned Parenthood.

Like his father, pro-life Democrat Bob Casey Sr., a former Pennsylvania governor whose administration fought against Planned Parenthood at the U.S. Supreme Court, Casey Jr. claims to be pro-life. However, the U.S. Senator has fallen far short of his father’s strong pro-life legacy.

On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania senator wrote an op-ed for the Huffington Post in support of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Casey argued that Planned Parenthood should continue to receive half a billion taxpayer dollars each year because it reduces abortions;

“The fact is, Planned Parenthood prevents unintended pregnancies and reduces abortions,” Casey wrote. “Blocking access to care at Planned Parenthood could have the exact opposite effect. By increasing access to all forms of contraception and high-quality contraceptive counseling, Planned Parenthood enables women to choose the methods that work best for their bodies and lifestyles.”

These claims may look good on the surface, but they are really very shallow when you look at what Planned Parenthood actually says and does.

Planned Parenthood does more abortions than any other group in the United States. In 2015, it performed 328,348 abortions on unborn babies, nearly 5,000 more than the previous year. That same year, its contraceptive services declined. It also receives about half a billion taxpayer dollars that year.

The abortion chain does not want to reduce abortions. It throws pizza parties to reward employees that exceed their abortion quotas, and in 2013, it even gave one of its Colorado clinics an award for “for exceeding abortion visits.”

Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood leaders refused an offer for an increase in tax funding if they stopped doing abortions. CEO Cecile Richards called the offer “obscene and insulting,” making it very clear that abortions – not women’s health care – are essential to Planned Parenthood.

Either Casey missed this or he chose to ignore it to suit his political career. Casey claimed to be a “pro-life Democrat” in the op-ed, but his voting record shows otherwise. So far this year, his pro-life voting record is zero, according to the National Right to Life Committee. In the past five years, Casey opposed pro-life measures twice as often as he supported them, NRLC reports.

He wrote, “I believe we must do everything we can to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in this country, including increasing access to contraception and helping pregnant women before and after birth by supporting Medicaid, WIC and other critical programs.”

Yet, Planned Parenthood is performing fewer non-abortion services, according to its annual reports from the past several years. From 2010 to 2014, Planned Parenthood reports showed dramatic decreases in the actual health services it provides, including breast cancer screenings, pap tests and STD tests and treatments.

If Casey’s goal is to help prevent unintended pregnancies and abortions, he should support pro-life legislators’ plans to defund Planned Parenthood and redirect tax dollars to community health centers. These federally qualified health clinics outnumber Planned Parenthoods by more than 20 to one, provide much more comprehensive care including contraception and prenatal care, and don’t do abortions.
_________________________________________________________________________________

When it comes to pro-life votes, U.S. Senator Bob Casey, Jr. has entered the “Hall of Shame.”

The son of the late Pennsylvania pro-life hero, Gov. Robert Casey, Sr., has voted not once, not twice, but three times against the pro-life position in critical votes in the U.S. Senate this year, according to National Right to Life’s highly-respected pro-life voting scorecard.

His votes add up to a whopping 0 percent pro-life voting record in 2017.

This from a man who claims he is pro-life—even while he promotes Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion operation, which commits more than 320,000 abortions annually.

In fact, today (Friday), Planned Parenthood Advocates of PA tweeted a photo of a rally they were attending in the Pennsylvania state Capitol which prominently featured–guess who?– Senator Casey.

The rally claimed to be promoting health care. However no matter how often and how loudly PPFA argues otherwise, abortion is not health care.

Sen. Casey voted against legislation nullifying pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s parting gift to Planned Parenthood. In recent years, several states receiving Title X family planning grants have opted to direct those funds to county health departments, community health centers, or other types of providers, in preference to organizations engaged in objectionable activities, such as Planned Parenthood, a mega-marketer of abortion.

At the eleventh hour of his administration. Obama’s Department Heath and Human Services issued a rule designed to prevent states from redirecting Title X funds away from unsuitable organizations such as Planned Parenthood.

Thankfully, the nullification of the pro-abortion Title X rule passed Congress and was signed into law by pro-life President Donald Trump—no thanks to Bob Casey.

Casey voted again contrary to the pro-life position of National Right to Life and the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation (an NRLC affiliate) when he voted the wrong way to allow filibusters for Supreme Court nominations. And then he hit the trifecta by voting against the confirmation of the highly-qualified and esteemed Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court justice. Again, Justice Gorsuch safely made it to the High Court, again with no help from Casey.

One political observer noted that Senator Casey appears to be positioning himself as the next Elizabeth Warren, the pro-abortion Massachusetts politician who has also scored a 0 percent pro-life voting record this year.

Senator Warren should not be Casey’s role model. His father should be—a man whose name is immortalized in the U.S. Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

While the case failed to result in an overturn of the tragic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, it did uphold most of the landmark Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act. That law, which has certainly stood the test of time, among other things provided for informed consent, 24-hour waiting periods for abortion, and bans on late-term abortions and sex selection abortions.

Legal scholars have also noted that Planned Parenthood v. Casey ushered in a new era of greater legal protection for pre-born children and their mothers, with state after state passing law after law. Those protective laws have helped to reduce the nation’s abortion totals to their lowest levels since the 1973 Roe ruling.

Sen. Casey routinely writes letters to constituents claiming he is pro-life. But his voting record does not back up those assertions. Neither do the valentines he routinely sends to the country’s biggest abortion promoter and provider, Planned Parenthood.

In our office is a signed copy of Robert Casey Sr.’s book, Fighting for Life. In this classic work, Casey Sr. recalled the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Outside the courtroom, Casey Sr. faced an army of television cameras and microphones. Writing of that moment, he said, “I tried to lay aside all the familiar arguments in the debate and ask the one question I believed to be at the heart of the issue: ‘In this debate, who speaks for the child? Today I’ve come to say that Pennsylvania speaks for the child.’”

But the son is no longer speaking for Pennsylvania, and his votes in the 115th Congress do not speak for the child, nor for the mother who spends a lifetime grieving a child lost to abortion.